Granted, he’s not “from” the district, but you would still expect Del. Ward Armstrong to know who he would be challenging after he decided to run in the 9th House District. Apparently, Del. Armstrong thinks Appalachian Power is the current occupant of the 9th District seat because both of the ads he has aired during this campaign have hit on his favorite (or only) issue: Appalachian Power’s rate increases.
In his first ad–a very well-done biographical ad co-starring his 95 year-old mother–Del. Armstrong vows to keep fighting APCO “until they stop raising rates.”
In his second ad, Del. Armstrong goes all-in with the APCO rate increase issue. What’s missing from both ads? Any mention of his real opponent, Del. Charles Poindexter. Does Del. Armstrong not want to compare records with a conservative Republican in a district Gov. McDonnell won in 2009 or does he realize that this populist issue is all he has going for him this year?
Del. Armstrong can’t tie Del. Poindexter to APCO because the Poindexter campaign has not yet received contributions from Appalachian Power. Furthermore, before being elected to the House of Delegates, Charles Poindexter–then a member of the Franklin County Board of Supervisors–worked to protect his constituents from what he and others in the Smith Mountain Lake-area believed were unnecessarily onerous restrictions placed on lakefront property owners by American Electric Power (APCO’s parent company), which holds the license to operate electricity-generating facilities on Smith Mountain Lake. If Del. Armstrong is attempting to make the case that a vote for Poindexter is a vote for Appalachian Power, he should probably rethink that strategy.
